Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was the ALIEN sequel bearing the name of the king who – according to tradition – founded the Eternal City. ALIEN: ROMULUS is indebted to the legends and legacy of the 1979 original and its descendants. The film is in thrall to all of them, for both better and worse. However, the final result feels more like stumbling around the ruins of the Great Fire of Rome than a triumphant temple atop the Palatine Hill.
Fede Alvarez’s film introduces the mining colony Jackson’s Star, a place evocative of Hadley’s Hope in ALIENS but teeming with activity and with a BLADE RUNNER-like veneer. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) has completed her mandatory hours to entitle her to transfer to more pleasant climes with her android brother, Andy (David Jonsson), only to have them extended and her hope squashed by Weyland-Yutani, the enduring boogeyman corporation of the ALIEN series. When her friends offer her the opportunity to hijack the cryopods of a station in orbit to escape, she and Andy set out for it and the horrors within.
In the initial stages, ALIEN: ROMULUS looks set to pursue the tone and ideas of Ridley Scott (a producer for this iteration) and ALIEN more closely than other entries. The indentured servitude here is more clunky and overt than the blue-collar disillusion of the crew in ALIEN, but present nonetheless. Rain and Andy are introduced over a meal, much like the Nostromo crew were, and their motivations are clearly established. However, the lack of distinction between the supporting characters is the first hint of cracks showing before the famous acidic blood eats through the film’s entire facade.
ALIEN: ROMULUS aims to harmonise all of the series’ themes (ALIEN, especially), the tone of ALIEN, and some of the action focus of ALIENS. However, it becomes so pre-occupied with unveiling the familiar aspects of the series – sometimes in the form of grotesque exhumations – that anything new takes the form of scraps scattered amongst the rusty references.
“…even amongst [its] strengths, one can find expressions of the film’s worst instincts. The choice to exhume the corpses of the series […] is a spectacularly ill-conceived and needless choice which is also poorly executed.”
The best performance comes from David Jonsson as Andy. His reprogramming to primarily serve Weyland-Yutani rather than protect Rain is a neat metaphor for the removal of humanity by the exploitative forces of capital. One of the more inventive expressions of this idea also comes in the form of a horrifying antagonist towards the conclusion, in an expression of the film’s strengths around production design, visual effects, and horror imagery.
However, even amongst these strengths, one can find expressions of the film’s worst instincts. The choice to exhume the corpses of the series – in a near-literal fashion similar to those of other Disney/Fox properties – is a spectacularly ill-conceived and needless choice which is also poorly executed. The primary and most egregious example (which is referenced obliquely in this article but is chest-burstingly obvious upon viewing) also fundamentally undermines the concept of corporate imperatives that create abominations and cheap facsimiles of humanity. Lines from older films or sequences of events are frequently repeated verbatim, devoid of the context that made them iconic. Although the film displays some set-piece inventiveness, they prove fleeting bridges to the next nostalgia hit.
“In moments, ALIEN: ROMULUS engenders some of the same spontaneous reactions that the best entries in this series have. However, it lacks the same pervading sense of dread and nihilistic ambivalence about your place in the universe.”
Even the film’s title fails to hark back to deeper underlying metaphors in the way PROMETHEUS or ALIEN: COVENANT did. Notionally, the Romulan idea is present in the prevalence of sibling relationships and the split station (two sections named after Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, often used to explore sibling relationships or notions of betrayal). However, these are left dangling listlessly. The incoherence or minimal presence of elements which could link to it, such as the Xenomorph’s penchant for abduction in the manner of The Rape of the Sabine Women, or the animalistic nature of the creatures evoking the brothers’ “raised by wolves” legend, leaves little to grab on to. Instead, ALIEN: ROMULUS feels guilty of the same thing many mainstream productions are: referencing Classical literature and stories to project gravitas and grandiosity rather than possessing a deeper level of thought.
In moments, ALIEN: ROMULUS engenders some of the same spontaneous reactions that the best entries in this series have. However, it lacks the same pervading sense of dread and nihilistic ambivalence about your place in the universe. The film will not linger, as it merely presents moments of horror (some unintentional) which pass. If this franchise has its Romulus in Ridley Scott, and ALIEN is his Rome, Fede Alvarez’s film is the fall of the Roman Empire: a scattered jumble of icons and monuments faintly echoing a triumphant past.